Bloodshed, Intrigues And Oppression

Bloodshed, Intrigues And Oppression

SwedishFreak’s condensed Swedish history continues today with the second of six episodes.

This is medieval times between the 11th and 15th centuries, when a number of small kingdoms were united to form Sweden.

Christianity arrived: there is the king who is hailed as a saint for performing a crusade, even though the crusade never happened and the king himself was an ardent heathen.

There is bloodshed and intrigues, when three dynasties are competing for the throne of the united kingdom. There is the man who neutered horses with his teeth and became the ancestor of a royal family…

Great wealth was gathered in merchant cities, but there was also war and pestilence. And it ended with a union between Sweden and Denmark which was very unsuccessful.

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The Author

Thomas

Thomas is a retired IT professional, who lives alone with his golden retriever Ziggy Stardust in a small townhouse in a small town in the southern half of Sweden. He has two grown-up kids and at least five grandkids – "as far as I know".

Thomas enjoys daily long walks with Ziggy in the forests around town, he loves cooking for his guests, and he likes to make things with his hands. He says he loves good food, good wine, people who smile and make him smile.

Having spent most of his life developing things, methods and organizations, he's passionately interested in all kinds of technology, natural science, politics,... anything that raises a problem, whether it can be solved or not. Consequently, he is consistently short of time.

While he was professionally active, he lived in San Francisco a few years, working as software engineer down in Silicon Valley. He claims that he did leave his heart in San Francisco, and is constantly planning to go back and pick it up. Quoting Hoagy Carmichael's Hong Kong Blues, he says "... every time I try to leave, sweet opium won't let me fly away... ...i.e. my opium is Sweden, my kids, my dog, my friends, my forest,... you know, I'm Swedish."